Once it
was all said and done, Severus thought the whole thing was rather
anticlimactic. Truthfully, he had never expected to outlive both of
his Masters, but here he was, the Dark Mark nothing more than a pale
white tracing on his arm. He had a small amount of blood trailing
down his right cheek from a stray cutting curse, but other than his
boots being scuffed up, he was very alive and whole.

He
felt an odd sensation welling up from deep inside of him. He raised
his left hand to put it against his chest and noticed that his hand
was trembling. The feeling churned deep in his gut and then shot
straight up, ripping through his psyche and Severus Snape did
something that he had not done, ever, at least in this lifetime.

He
flung his arms straight out to the sky, dropping his wand, and
started to laugh in sheer euphoria.

Ronald
Weasley was on his knees, cradling his fiancée in his arms,
rocking her back and forth. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his
neck and both of them were weeping tears of joy. Voldemort was gone,
for good this time, and everyone could feel it in the very air.
Somehow, it was easier to breathe. Both the young wizard and witch
were giddy with elation and Hermione was giggling, something she was
not well-known for doing. Even with their celebrating the death of
the Dark Lord, the sound of something completely foreign to them came
to their ears, causing them both to look up across the grounds of
Hogwarts.

Ron
dropped Hermione from his arms and she was too stunned to hang on.
Severus Snape, the Greasy Git himself, had his arms flung skyward and
was cackling insanely.

"Probably
the shock of the loss of the Dark Mark," offered Hermione,
all-knowingly.

"That,
or he was just barmy all along and he's finally cracking now that
snake-face snuffed it," countered Ron.

Hermione
made a tsking sound with her tongue, her head shaking in pity, and
Ron tried not to puff his chest out for being right all along about
the mad old bat.

Ron
was puzzled though, for his best friend, the
Boy-Who-Lived-More-Times-Than-Anyone-Expected, was racing at a
breakneck speed towards their former Potions master.

'Probably
to knock some sense in to the old duffer,' he thought to
himself, and turned to kiss his fiancée breathless.

Neville
Longbottom kept looking at the wand in his hand to the Death Eater
laying less than 4 feet from him. He had cast stupefy without
even thinking, and he knew damn well that without Harry Potter's
help, he never would have had the confidence to react in such a
fashion. He owed his former roommate his life, in more ways than
one. A silly grin started to waver across his formerly frightened
face and he started to giggle, drunk with knowledge that the war was
over and he was still alive.

He
suddenly found himself flying backwards and landing on his arse,
shoved over by a blur that, strangely enough, looked like Harry.

"Sorry
Neville!" he heard fading away and Neville just shrugged to himself
and got up to go find Luna Lovegood or Ginny Weasley. Where he could
find one, he knew he would find the other.

Fred
& George Weasley were quite the pair. Their role in the war had
been rather obvious from the day they had created a lake in the fifth
floor corridor, almost three years ago. A week after their escape
from Umbridge's clutches, they were found by Kingsley Shacklebolt,
holed up at a seedy tavern in Diagon Alley, bent over various notes
on pranks and gags, and hoping their mother couldn't find them.
Despite the twins' age of eighteen, their mother wouldn't think
twice about smacking them upside the head for the stunt they had
pulled.

Kingsley
had contacted them on behalf of Albus Dumbledore, he himself in
hiding at the time. The Headmaster wanted to see them, the sooner
the better. All of their little jokes and pranks were about to pay
off, in a very big way. Contracts were drawn and in a matter of
days, the twins were producing the strangest weapons ever used in a
war, their pay packets coming straight from the Order of the Phoenix.

The
Death Eaters were more terrified of the Weasley twins than they were
of Harry Potter. Potter only packed spells around and shields could
guard against most spells. The twin terrors had things that caught
you while you were sleeping and would rip your flesh off, or so the
rumours went.

At
present, the twins could be found only a couple of feet away from the
shores of Hogwarts' Lake. It appeared as if one of the twins was
having a conversation with the Giant Squid.

"Want
him whole, or do you want us to strip him first?" the twin in
question asked a tentacle.

"Here
George, grab his legs!" grunted the other twin, whom obviously was
Fred. George walked away from the flailing tentacle and picked up
the legs in question. Fred had the Death Eater by his arms and on
the count of three, the two young men let go of their charge. The
unnamed former servant of the idiot formerly known as the Dark Lord
sailed in a nice arc and came to a splash landing right in the
tentacles of the squid. There was a loud slurping sound, and the
Death Eater disappeared from sight and was never heard from again.

"Nice
toss!" The compliment came from a dark-headed person running at
full tilt across the grounds.

"Thanks
mate!" called George.

"Where
y'off to, Harry?" called Fred.

"Gotta
go, can't talk!" and Harry kept running. The twins shrugged and
turned back to the task of feeding the squid. It wouldn't be long
now before someone arrived and caught them in the act, so they
figured they should get in as much fun as they could.

"Oi!
Fred! This one's still alive!" George chortled in glee and Fred
moved to join him in the new game.

Draco
Malfoy slowly opened his eyes. Merlin, the pain! He swore that even
his eyelashes hurt. At first, he thought he was blind, as the only
thing he could see was the colour blue, but after his brain adjusted,
it dawned on him that he was laying flat on his back and that it was
the sky he was looking at.

He made an
attempt at sitting up, but failed miserably. His battered and beaten
body simply would not respond. He flailed about with his arms,
trying to right himself, but did nothing more than do a first-rate
imitation of a drunken tortoise.

He
flopped his head down to the ground again and growled in frustration.
He heard the thundering of running feet heading towards him and he
figured that this was it, the end. He knew they had lost the war and
that Potter had killed the Dark Lord for good. They were coming to
either finish him off or sacrifice him to the Weasley twins for
experiments.

Just
before he turned his head to watch his approaching doom, he saw a
pair of legs and some flapping robes go flying over his body, to thud
down on his other side and keep running.

'Hunh.' Draco thought to himself. 'That answers the puzzle of what
Potter wears under his robes.' He heard more feet running
towards him, but he no longer had the strength to look around. He
knew he was hurt, and badly.

A pair of
matching faces crowned with red hair leaned over in to his vision.

Draco's
last coherent thought was, 'Oh shite.'

It was a
long time before anyone ever heard what had become of Draco Malfoy,
Death Eater Lieutenant.

Severus
Snape finally stopped crowing in delight and lowered his arms. His
face still looked like he was beaming in rapture and it was a look
that, though felt strange to him, he was quite tickled to be feeling.

He
heard the thrumming of feet coming across Hogwarts grounds, and he
turned around to see a very glorious sight. The grin already
plastered across his face broadened until it was encompassing every
part of him, even his eyes. Hell, Albus Dumbledore couldn't have
twinkled better. If Severus looked in a mirror at this moment, he
would have scared himself silly.

Harry
Potter was running full tilt towards his former Potions master and
instead of coming up with an insult and a scowl, Severus walked
towards the young man and opened his arms.

Harry
hit his body at full run, but Severus didn't care. He wrapped the
nineteen year old man up as tight as he could and they both laughed
together. Harry was exclaiming repeatedly, "It's over! We did
it!" while Severus spun him in a slow circle.

"Yes, it
IS over. We're free, at last we are free!" He lowered his young
lover to the ground and tilted his head down to meet Harry's lips
in a slow kiss. If this feeling of having his soul sucked out
through his lips is what pure joy felt like, he was pretty damn sure
he could do this every single minute of every single hour of every
single day for the rest of his life.

For the
second time in less than ten minutes, Hermione Granger was dropped
from Ron's arms and she nearly smacked her head on the ground.

"Ron
Weasley! What on earth is wrong with you?" she chastised. She
looked up at Ron's face to see him looking absolutely dumbfounded
over where she knew Snape was doing his weird little ritual. Ron
reached down, grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look over at
Snape.

Standing
together, clenched in the tightest lip lock either of them had ever
seen in their lifetimes, was their best friend and the Potions master
of Hogwarts. Hermione started to breathe heavily, her brain
frantically scrambling through the myriad of information she kept
stored up there on various people.

Ron just
shook his head. "Barmy. Both of 'em. Paddling down the creek
but forgot the oars." He tightened his arm around his fiancée,
delighted that they survived with their mental faculties intact.

"But…"
Hermione continued, still trying to deal with the fact that she had
overlooked something that was now, completely obvious.

"Hermione,
hush," and suddenly she found herself being kissed senseless, once
again.

There were
worse things that could happen.

Harry
Potter was in the one and only place in the entire Universe that he
wanted to be – in Severus Snape's arms, being kissed in to
oblivion. He still couldn't believe they both had survived the
whole ordeal, and they had made preparations expecting that one, if
not both, would die today.

After all
of the pain, the spying and sneaking about, the lies and the horrific
things that war brings with it, this was just the most perfect thing
he could think of. If he died right at this moment, he would die the
happiest man ever to have existed.

From
today on, he would have Severus all to himself. No Dumbledore digging
his claws in to their life, telling them what they could and could
not do, no more Order, and to hell with the Auror program and the
Ministry!

It would
just be them and he could feel Severus each and every day, listen to
his liquid velvet voice caress him without feeling like he was
putting the older man in dire jeopardy, and he didn't care who
knew. Nothing mattered any more.

Harry
looked up at Severus and put all of his desires in to four simple
words. "Severus, take me home."

Severus
looked in to his lover's eyes and smiled again. In his strange
form of bedroom talk, he replied, "As you wish it, so mote it be."
He leaned down and kissed Harry once again, and while still
embracing, the couple Dissaparated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry.

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